Violence against women

Globally, at least 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone some form of female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM). Sierra Leone has one of the highest rates of FGM in the world, with nine in every 10 women and girls cut, many as young as five years old.

Human trafficking and exploitation are rife among Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar to seek safety in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, according to interviews and community focus groups conducted in the district's makeshift settlements by IOM, the UN Migration Agency.

"Many girls flee their homes with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing," says Apaisaria Kiwori, as she instructs the designated cooks to stir the pots of red kidney beans and rice for dinner.

Pari Ibrahim, 27, is the founder and Executive Director of the Free Yezidi Foundation (FYF), an independent, non-profit organization that provides services for women survivors of the violent ISIS attacks on the Yezidi community, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

There is hardly a woman or a girl, in urban and rural areas alike, who has not experienced sexual harassment or the threat of sexual violence in public spaces. Unwanted sexual remarks and jokes, groping, indecent exposure and many other forms of sexual harassment are often trivialized and rarely

Every eleventh woman in Georgia has experienced domestic violence. Many of them cannot leave abusive relationships due to financial dependency. The Adjara Group, a signatory of the Women's Empowerment Principles, an initiative by UN Women and the UN Global Compact, is recruiting survivors and

Jana Mustafa is a former employee of an international NGO and a survivor of violence. She lost her job due to an abusive marriage and experienced years of physical and psychological violence. She got a divorce with the legal help of the Hayat Centre in the Gaza Strip.

"If you find yourself in a place that allows you to make a real difference in other women's lives, obstacles will not stop you anymore," says Ayah al-Wakil, a lawyer working at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza Strip.

More than 2 million people across Mozambique, especially in the southern and central regions, have been affected by severe drought since 2015. The prolonged crisis has exhausted household food stock, disrupted lives and livelihood. For Mozambican women and girls, who are primarily responsible for

In the remote farming village of Sakreang, in Cambodia's far north-east, Romam Pcheuk visits pregnant women in their homes. "I keep my eye on the girls who are pale, and those that get pregnant very young," she explained. "It's my job to warn them of danger signs."